Warning: the following interview contains spoilers from Disney+/Marvel’s season one finale of Hawkeye, “So This Is Christmas?”:
“The people need to be reminded that this city belongs to me,” Vincent D’Onofrio’s Wilson Fisk aka Kingpin tells his loyal henchman Kazi at the onset of the Hawkeye season one finale.
As Hawkeye hands off to its spinoff series Echo, which follows deaf superhero Maya Lopez (Alaqua Cox), that’s the big question as to whether D’Onofrio’s Wilson Fisk will continue to reign over New York City. He did endure quite the punch in the season ender of Hawkeye, which saw the bad guy returning to the Marvel Television screen after three seasons on Netflix’s Daredevil. Kingpin gets shot at with arrows, but pulls them off his chest like moths; gets slammed into by a car that has Eleanor Bishop (Vera Farmiga) behind the wheel, and survives several exploding trick arrows which Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld) detonates.
Fisk ultimately has a gun in his face with Maya behind the barrel. She called him uncle, and Fisk became her guardian following her father’s murder. She’s been set on avenging her father’s murder, and when she learns Clint Barton’s Ronin wasn’t responsible, rather Kingpin, that’s when Maya quits the big boss.
In the final moments of “So This is Christmas?” we hear Maya’s gun go off, but Kingpin’s supposed death is offscreen. Seriously, can this big brute truly tumble? He survived a lot worse in the episode before being shot.
“I hope he didn’t die,” D’Onofrio tells Deadline about Kingpin’s fate, “I’m with the fans, I want to keep playing this part. My hope is that we continue.”
“I wasn’t expecting it,” said D’Onofrio about receiving the call from Marvel boss Kevin Feige earlier this year to reprise the violent Daredevil villain; one of the character’s most ruthless moments being in season, episode 4 of that series when he slams a car door on the head and neck of former Russian mob leader Anatoly Ranskahov.
“I didn’t know that Daredevil was going to end when it did, I thought it was going to continue for a few more years,” says the actor, “There was a lot to explore there, there were many facets of my character to explore.”
Talking about where Fisk stands in his canon of tough guys, D’Onofrio says, “The people I play are based on real emotions and real life, and I try to bring the events of their pasts in the now. Kingpin is like that in Hawkeye. He has a lot more physical strength and can take physical abuse, but grounded in this emotional world. And he does everything through that emotional world: He’s like a child and a monster simultaneously.”
“Everything that he does is based on events of his childhood,” adds D’Onofrio.
When asked what Kingpin and the tracksuit mafia want with Laura Barton’s (Linda Cardellini) Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Rolex watch, D’Onofrio admits he’s with the viewers gripping on that cliffhanger. Clint recovered that timepiece, which had a very special significance to Laura; the watch first appearing in a black auction at the start of the series with other items recovered from Avengers HQ. The Rolex has a tracking device and the S.H.I.E.L.D. logo on the back with the number 19.
“I’m trying to figure it out like everyone else,” says the actor about the watch’s significance, “I’m in the same boat: I really need more information.”